Presented by Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities and Colby Cinema Studies

RUN LOLA RUN - 35mm

OCTOBER 23, 2019 | 7:15 P.M.

There’s rarely been more concentrated cinematic energy than in this incredibly compact, thrilling movie—nor could there be much more energy than in star Franka Potente’s unforgettable embodiment of Lola, whose movie this just plain is. “Run Lola Run is a madly spinning top of a movie—one that, I suspect, will eventually be regarded as the art-house smash that heralded the 21st century… The ferociously infectious, candy-colored jump-cut style of Run Lola Run is pure, propulsive pop. The movie would have been unthinkable prior to the age of MTV and Tarantino, Oliver Stone and Trainspotting. Still, for all its pulsating, razor-edited exuberance, the film is ultimately as unique as its sources. In its speed and elegant hyper-precision, its celebration of action as devotion, it’s a new-style girl-power daydream. The film’s burbly techno soundtrack never stops, and neither does its heroine, Lola, a tattooed Berlin punkette with flame-red hair who has just 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 marks for her boyfriend, Manni. He owes the money to a gangster, but he left a plastic bag full of cash on the subway, where it fell into the hands of a derelict. At noon, Manni plans to walk into a supermarket and commit a desperate robbery, virtually ensuring his doom”—Entertainment Weekly. Only Lola can save him. But there will be no less than three endings to this story…. R. 1999. In German with English subtitles. 81 Min.

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

November 20, 2019 | 7:15 p.m.

“Awe-inspiring. Stimulates the senses and the conscience simultaneously”—Hollywood Reporter. Manufactured Landscapes is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. In the spirit of such environmentally enlightening sleeper-hits as An Inconvenient Truth and Rivers and Tides, this film powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it. Unrated. 2006. 90 Min.

MODERN TIMES

DECEMBER 4, 2019 | 7:15 P.M.

“One of the many remarkable things about Charlie Chaplin is that his films continue to hold up, to attract and delight audiences”—Roger Ebert. And why shouldn’t they? Though rooted in the Industrial rather than the Digital Age, Chaplin’s satire of the anti-human wages of mechanization is equally relevant today—to say nothing of just plain belly-laugh hilarious. His last film as his defining “Little Tramp” character was made nine years past film’s Silent era ended, yet uses no dialog—but tons of sound—as Charlie’s everyman encounters a factory assembly line in which he has to impossibly tighten bolts, a gamine (Paulette Godard) whom he takes under his wing and, most hilariously, a mechanized eating machine he is strapped into and… well, not for nothing is Modern Times on virtually every list of the greatest movies ever made—and maybe at the top of funniest. G. 1936. 87 Min.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

january 8, 2020 | 7:15 p.m.

In the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and everyone is fighting for the necessities of life, there are two rebels who just might be able to restore order—Max (Tom Hardy), a man of action and few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos, and Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a woman of action who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland. “Mad Max: Fury Road is certainly a blast and a half: You don’t just watch it, you rock out to it…This is not, it should be said, a “reboot.” It’s the same Mad Max, post-Thunderdome, though now played by Tom Hardy. But… it’s a woman-centric movie. Furiosa is fleeing across the vast wasteland in search of a matriarchal oasis she calls the “green place of many mothers…. It turns out that what compelled him to make this fourth Mad Max was the notion of a nurturing, matriarchal society far removed from the grotesque sadism of male-warrior culture”—Dave Edelstein, New York. R. 2015. 120 Min.

WAKING LIFE - 35mm

February 12, 2020 | 7:15 p.m.

“The film’s protagonist, played by Wiley Wiggins from director Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, sleepwalks around—sometimes he appears to float—asking essential questions about existence, identity, the nature of the universe and whether it’s a big, stupid risk to make a plotless movie about dreams. That the Texas-based Linklater, celebrated for his 1991 debut Slacker, chose to express his ideas through animation shows he has guts. That he pulls off the innovative feat with hypnotic assurance is nothing short of amazing. This isn’t your dad’s animation, or even Disney’s. Having first shot the film digitally with live actors in Texas and New York, Linklater and art director Bob Sabiston asked 31 artists to computer-paint over that footage in their own distinct styles, assigning different characters and vignettes to each artist. The result is a magic-carpet ride the likes of which has not been seen since the head-tripping days of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Yellow Submarine. But don’t label Waking Life “For Stoners Only.” Linklater’s cerebral provocations allow for tickling visuals—check out that car-boat—and lively humor…Waking Life works like a dream”—Peter Travers, Rolling Stone. 2001. R. 99 Min.

ERASERHEAD - 35mm

march 4, 2020 | 7:15 p.m.

A dream of dark and troubling things…. David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey continues to haunt American cinema like no other film. Eraserhead was one of a kind: from its dysfunctional hero-introverted Henry Spencer with his upswept Bride of Elvis/Frankenstein hairdo and his skittish girlfriend, Mary X, to its stunningly weird visual style to its wildly askew take on '70s America. Shot in L.A., but set in a German Expressionist version of Philadelphia (a city writer-director David Lynch, who once lived there, described as "Hell on Earth"), Eraserhead becomes a strange reverse-erotic poem. What makes Eraserhead great and still, perhaps, the best of all Lynch's films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer. Perhaps also, it's because "Eraserhead" is in black and white: a voluptuously bleak, beautifully grim and eerie monochrome reeking of Expressionism’s film noir/horror movie progeny. And perhaps it's simply because Lynch's viewpoint is so bizarre, he needs to be completely immersed in his own hermetic world to be, paradoxically, free”—Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune. Unrated. 1978. 89 Min.

ENTER THE VOID

april 15, 2020 | 7:15 p.m.

A French drug dealer living in Tokyo is betrayed by his best friend and killed in a drug deal. His soul, observing the repercussions of his death, seeks resurrection. Say wha?! Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is a visionary cinematic roller-coaster ride that “represents a revolutionary break from ordinary movie storytelling”—Andrew O’Hehir, Salon. Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta star in the visceral journey set against the thumping neon club scene of Tokyo, which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life, death, and the universally wonderful and horrible moments in between. “This is a daring, thrilling, awful and wondrous film...one of the most mind-blowing and ambitious feature films ever made” (O'Hehir). Unrated. In English and in Japanese with English subtitles. 2010. 161 Min.